Note to our followers: Due to a lack of sufficient funding, HealthNewsReview.org will cease daily publication of new content at the end of 2018. Publisher Gary Schwitzer and other contributors may post new articles periodically. If you wish to donate, your gift might help keep the site available to the public for a few more years, by defraying costs of web hosting and maintenance. All of our 6,000+ published articles contain lessons to help people improve their critical thinking about health care. Read more about our change in status. And here's how to make a donation.

Tags

As another full year of our analysis of health care news & PR wraps up soon, it is encouraging to see 3 articles in one week in the published literature address issues in health care journalism and PR – themes that we have addressed for 10 years. Each of the three papers delivers a different aspect of a report card to media messengers.

The CMAJ conflicts of interest (COI) paper

The researchers found that only 1 in 6 news stories analyzed included comments from independent experts. Of the 104 comments from experts analyzed in the study, a financial conflict of interest was present in 32% of the comments, of which only 33% were reported in the story.

One of the 10 criteria that our project uses when we review health care news stories that include claims about interventions is double-barreled, looking for two things in order to get a satisfactory score: Does the story use independent sources and identify conflicts of interest? Of the 2,300 stories we’ve reviewed, only about half get a satisfactory score on this criterion. That’s a huge sample, probably the largest such sample of stories about health care interventions that anyone has analyzed – so you can judge whether a 50-50 score across the huge sample is a case of the glass half full or half empty. I see it as half empty because the message still isn’t hitting home with many journalists.

The authors of the CMAJ paper reference the Statement of Principles of the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ), which I wrote. But a code of ethics or statement of principles isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on if it doesn’t become a fundamental part of the fabric of a newsroom or of an individual journalist’s modus operandi. And that clearly still isn’t happening enough. Many AHCJ members are the ones who write the stories that we review, giving them unsatisfactory scores. In our experience, when you combine journalists’ performance on COI/independent sources with how they’ve done in emphasizing/exaggerating benefits while minimizing/ignoring potential harms – and costs – you see why it’s a much bigger and worse report card. A recent breakdown:

To help journalists we provide a list of industry-independent experts who are willing to work with journalists. The list is currently being updated, revised and expanded. So, whereas there are about 100 names on the list now, we may double that in the next year.

Our message to journalists covering health care: if you don’t know the landscape and aren’t aware of the prevalence of conflicts of interest, or if you know this but fail to report on it, you don’t have any business reporting on these issues. Because there’s a good chance you’re misleading your audience and hurting more than helping.

This paper’s analysis covers the early years of our work from 2005 (beta development that year) until 2013 – an analysis of our first 1,889 news story reviews. They found:

On average, the stories reviewed during 2005–2010 successfully met just less than half of the criteria, but by 2010–2013, that average had improved to almost 70%. There were significant improvements over time in news organizations’ success in meeting six of HNR’s 10 criteria. In addition, there was a statistically significant decline in the percentage of stories rated satisfactory on establishing the true novelty of the intervention discussed in the story. There was no improvement in quantification of possible harms from medical interventions.

If you’re wondering why the grades in my little table above look so bad, in comparison with what the U of Florida analysis showed, let me clarify. My table reports on only the 5 criteria for which journalists/writers have performed the worst. The other 5 criteria get markedly better average grades. In my view, the 5 that I highlighted carry a far greater weight than the ones not represented in my table. And the analysis suggesting average across-the-board improvement treats all criteria as if they had equal weight.

One consistent theme through the years: stories and news releases tend to minimize or completely ignore the potential harms of health care interventions. The Florida research team concluded:

Health journalists and the organizations they represent can increase their public value—and hence, perhaps, regain some public relevance—by consistently providing the comprehensive information consumers need to make important decisions about their own and their families’ health.

You might also like

Comments

We Welcome Comments. But please note: We will delete comments left by anyone who doesn’t leave an actual first and last name and an actual email address.

We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified facts, product pitches, or profanity. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. Comments should primarily discuss the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages about health and medicine. This is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science. Nor is it a forum to share your personal story about a disease or treatment -- your comment must relate to media messages about health care.
If your comment doesn't adhere to these policies, we won't post it. Questions? Please see more on our comments policy.

Comments are closed.

Our Comments Policy

We welcome comments, which users can leave at the end of any of our systematic story reviews or at the end of any of our blog posts.

But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.

You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.

This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.

We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.

We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.

“Shed light, not just heat. Facts, challenges, disagreements, corrections — those are all fine. Attacking the person, instead of the idea or the interpretation, is neither acceptable nor helpful.”

We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.

And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.

The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.

Newsletter Signup

Get caught up with this once-a-week email

We will not display your name or e-mail address on the site, nor will we share your e-mail address with any third parties.

Newsletter Signup

Sign up for HealthNewsReview.org weekly email digest

Thank you for joining the HealthNewsReview.org mailing list. It’s a good way for you to stay up-to-date on what we’ve published, even if you forget to come to our website every day or every week.-Gary Schwitzer, Publisher, HealthNewsReview.org

Email Address*

First Name*

Last Name

Please verify

Email

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

By submitting this form, you are granting: HealthNewsReview.org, University of Minnesota , Minneapolis, MN, 55455, United States, https://www.healthnewsreview.org permission to email you. You may unsubscribe via the link found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Mailchimp. (See their Email Privacy Policy for details.)